AI is one of the hottest topics today. Even the classic sales challenge “Sell me this pen” now has a new answer: “This pen is AI-powered.” 

Sure, an AI-powered pen sounds cool, but for sales teams, having a good CRM is actually what matters. That’s why successful sales teams are 81% more likely to practice consistent usage of CRMs. Now the question is: Is your CRM AI-powered? If not, you could be falling behind the competition.

Sales is filled with routine tasks, from managing follow ups to updating records, which often make you think, “This should have been easier.” CRMs have been fixing these issues for years. Now, with AI, they’ve stepped up their game.

But what are the best AI CRMs in the market and how to know which one fits your unique needs? Well, we discuss exactly that in this article. Here’s our list of best AI-powered CRM for different use cases.  

Privyr: Best AI CRM for WhatsApp-first sales teams that are always on the go

Many sales teams today rely on WhatsApp to connect with leads, nurture clients, and close deals. It’s a great channel for B2C communications. However,  while the app makes conversations easy, managing and organising your entire sales process directly in it can be messy and inefficient. This is where Privyr CRM comes in.

Privyr is a mobile-first, AI-powered lead engagement system made for B2C salespeople and teams who use WhatsApp. It works seamlessly with your regular WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business numbers, and you can easily track your progress with every lead you’ve talked to.

All you need to do is create your account, download the app, and connect Privyr directly to your Facebook Ads, Google Forms, website, and other lead sources. From there, you can:

Privyr totally eliminates the need to type, copy-and-paste, or manually track and remember where you’re at with each lead – freeing up your time and capacity.

For sales teams, Privyr goes beyond just sending automatic responses, scheduling follow ups, and arranging all data in a central location. Its AI-powered lead distribution and assignment also ensure every lead is automatically routed to the right salesperson, based on any rules you define or round-robin setup. Sales managers also get real-time reports and insights, so they can monitor performance across all leads and team members without having to micromanage every deal or conversation.    

Why Privyr is the best for WhatsApp-first sales teams

Speed is critical for WhatsApp-first sales teams. Leads could be coming in from your listings, websites, or ads, and the faster you respond, the higher your chances of closing the lead. With its AI-powered features, Privyr eliminates delays and repetitive tasks, ensuring every lead gets an immediate, personalised response from you or your team member.

Here are some AI features of Privyr:

  • WhatsApp Auto-Responder: The moment a lead submits their details on your form, ad, or website, Privyr instantly sends them a personalised message from your WhatsApp. This creates a professional first impression and keeps prospects engaged, even while you’re offline.
  • Automatic lead detection and import: You won’t have to manually copy leads from your emails or portals into the CRM. Privyr’s AI auto-detects new leads from any of your sources or email inboxes, instantly importing them to your phone and sending you alerts. Your team can start following up without wasting time on data entry.
  • Auto-personalised message templates: Privyr auto-suggests and auto-personalises your follow-up templates forWhatsApp, SMS, and more. You only need to tap send, saving you lots of time while keeping the messages tailored to each lead, even when bulk messaging.
  • Automatic lead distribution and assignment: Privyr ensures your leads are assigned automatically and quickly to the right salesperson based on any rules you define, reducing response delays and avoiding confusion.

Instantly CRM: Best AI CRM for email-first teams that do cold outreach

Instantly is a CRM system designed for outbound email outreach. The tool focuses on making email campaigns more effective, scalable, and easier to manage. This makes it especially valuable for businesses that rely on cold emailing or drip sequences to generate leads and sales.

With Instantly, you can easily create, schedule, and track multiple email campaigns across different inboxes. Plus, their built-in warm-up systems help keep your emails out of spam folders. You can connect multiple inboxes and manage high-volume outreach without risking domain reputation. Additionally, you can also track open rates, clicks, and replies to measure performance and optimise your campaigns.

Why Instantly works for email-first sales teams

As someone running a sales team that mainly relies on emails, you want to make sure your email conversations are organised and your messages don’t end up in spam. This is where Instantly’s AI-rich features stand out. 

Instantly offers AI-driven personalisation to ensure prospects receive messages that feel relevant, improving open and reply rates. Automated warm-up feature simulates natural email activity to build inbox reputation and ensure future emails land in the inbox of leads.

Similarly, Instantly also allows AI to handle email sequencing. With this, you can send campaigns from multiple accounts at once without overlapping or spamming. This makes scaling outreach safer and more efficient. Moreover, their smart detection of intent and categorising of email responses (interested, not now, unsubscribe) ensures no valuable lead is missed and sales reps can focus only on high-potential replies.

Freshsales: Best AI CRM for call-centric / inside sales teams

Freshsales, part of the Freshworks suite, is a CRM designed to help sales teams manage customer relationships more efficiently, especially those with call-centric workflows. It offers a strong built-in telephony system – super useful for teams whose primary sales channel are phone calls. Freshsales comes with native calling features – no third-party integrations or external PBX systems needed.  

You can make and receive calls directly within the CRM without needing additional telephony hardware or software, all while keeping your customer details, deal progress, and communication history in one place.

Freshsales also offers pipeline visualisation deal stages and connects with Freshworks’ wider ecosystem and other third-party tools.

Why Freshsales works for call-centric sales teams

Freshsales brings AI-driven intelligence to make calling smarter and more productive for sales teams that want to build relationships and close deals through calls. Their AI Lead Scoring ranks leads based on behavior and likelihood to convert, helping sales reps prioritise who to call first.

Furthermore, Freshsales automatically records and transcribes every call, removing the need for manual note-taking. Your team can revisit conversations anytime, and you can review their calls for training and quality assurance. After each call, their AI suggests follow-ups or tasks based on the conversation. For instance, it might ask you to send a proposal, schedule a demo, or set a reminder for a callback depending on how your conversation with a lead went.

Hubspot Commerce Hub: Best AI CRM for e-commerce and social commerce

HubSpot Commerce Hub combines e-commerce features with CRM functionality, making it easy for businesses to manage their online stores while building stronger relationships with customers. 

HubSpot Commerce Hub seamlessly connects with Shopify, WooCommerce, and other platforms to sync your customer and order data. You can also track their purchase history, behaviours, and engagement in one dashboard. 

Additionally, the tool lets you also automate follow-up emails, promotions, and upsell campaigns directly from the CRM. You can also monitor a shopper’s entire journey from their first website visit to repeat purchases.

Why use HubSpot Commerce Hub for e-commerce & social commerce

Selling online becomes more effective when you engage customers at the right moment with the right message. With its AI-powered features, HubSpot Commerce Hub helps decrease manual and repetitive tasks to help you focus more on conversions and customer loyalty.

The tool offers AI-powered features like abandoned cart emails, predictive product recommendations, smart segmentation, and ecommerce insights. With these, you won’t need to compose emails for each abandoned cart, manually analyse customer behaviour, or record purchase history repeatedly. Additionally, smart insights can help you predict the customer outcome in advance. 

Salesforce Revenue Cloud: Best AI CRM for SaaS sales

Salesforce Revenue Cloud is a CRM designed by Salesforce to handle the complexities of SaaS sales and subscription services. It brings together CRM, billing, and revenue management so you can manage your entire customer lifecycle from one system.

Some of its major features include subscription and billing management, CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote), Contract & Renewal Tracking, and Revenue Operations. These help you simplify the process of building accurate quotes while keeping all customer contracts and renewal dates within the CRM. The CRM works for startups all the way to large enterprises, with great customisation options.

Why Salesforce Revenue Cloud works for subscription / SaaS Sales

Retaining customers and growing accounts is one of the most critical goals for subscription-based businesses. Salesforce Revenue Cloud, powered by Einstein AI, helps predict churn risks and uncover opportunities.

Einstein AI analyses customer behaviour like engagement, product usage, and support history to identify accounts at risk of cancellation. Sales teams can easily understand the pattern and act early to prevent churn. Additionally, evaluation of account behavior by AI helps teams identify opportunities for upgrades, add-ons, or complementary products, helping teams grow revenue without extra prospecting.

Instead of relying on static pipeline updates, Salesforce Revenue Cloud predicts future revenue based on deal health and historical patterns giving you more accurate forecasts. Moreover, AI-assisted configure-price-quote helps sales teams generate accurate, complex quotes quickly. AI also streamlines renewals by sending proactive reminders, surfacing contract details, and recommending the best renewal strategies for each account.

Final words

If you primarily rely on WhatsApp to communicate with your leads, you’re essentially running the most important steps of your sales process there. Having the right CRM that supports everything on WhatsApp, from automatically responding to new leads to sending auto-personalised content like purchase estimates, can save you time and boost your sales. With the right setup, you can convert more leads right from your phone.
If that sounds like your workflow, look no further than Privyr. It’s the best lead engagement system designed for WhatsApp-first teams, built to simplify the sales process and maximise results. Try Privyr today!

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Author

A writer from the heart and marketer from the mind, Michael writes to help businesses implement effective sales and marketing strategies.